Even modern advertisements that you'd never guess, use puffery. Take, for example, Kellogg's Frosted Flakes. They're what?? They're gr-r-reat!! Really?
Look at the ads you see today and notice how many of them use puffery.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Puffery
Puffery is a technique commonly used in the advertising world. It refers to an over-exaggeration of a product or service. Examples of this would include saying such phrases as "the best", "the most satisfying", or "the greatest". These phrases don't even necessarily need to be true. They could have the worst, least satisfying product out there. The way that advertisers can get away with phrases like this has to do with proof. There is no calculation that can tell me if your product is "the best." Although the company can't prove that it's the best, you can't prove it's not. Best in what? Even though quantitative claims can be proven wrong, qualitative ones can't. Puffery is present in many companies.
This probably isn't the greatest value in the world, but you can't prove its not.
Even modern advertisements that you'd never guess, use puffery. Take, for example, Kellogg's Frosted Flakes. They're what?? They're gr-r-reat!! Really?
Look at the ads you see today and notice how many of them use puffery.
Even modern advertisements that you'd never guess, use puffery. Take, for example, Kellogg's Frosted Flakes. They're what?? They're gr-r-reat!! Really?
Look at the ads you see today and notice how many of them use puffery.
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Puffery is awesome!! Nice use of pictures. It's always fun to look at products and see how they encorporate things we learn in class
ReplyDeleteYour blog is nice. Is this the first one you've ever done? I don't know how to put all the pics and vids in a blog. Oh and I do happen to love puffery in ads, most of the time. I think they are usually funny, like the most interesting man in the world commercials or whatever they are. It's funny.
ReplyDeleteI was watching an episode of the Big Bang Theory this afternoon (procrastinating before I did my blog stuff) and there was an example that I think relatively relates to this post. One of the characters took his girlfriend to the "Cheesecake Factory" and she tells him, after waiting a long amount of time to get their order taken, "The name cheesecake FACTORY implies that it will be quick and efficient. The name is misleading and is in no way efficient." Or something to that effect. Puffery seems to work the same way. Making somebody think that your service is greatly valued and of high quality, when in fact it is ordinary and not all that great. Random comment from the peanut gallery....my apologies.
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